


you'll never know what a fool i've been

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, now it has no beginning just a middle and an end, this was supposed to be a ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 04:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15111674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: Rose catches Rey "we're just friends" Niima and Ben "nothing's going on" Solo about to go at it on the kitchen counter. The interrogation that follows leads Rey to a stunning realization that might change everything.





	you'll never know what a fool i've been

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm gearing up for Reylo Week, and I promised myself I wouldn't get distracted. Then this idea popped into my head and I naively told myself "it's just a ficlet, might as well". Here we are, 2000+ words later.
> 
> Title taken from Florence + the Machine's _Hardest of Hearts_.

The first time the doorbell rings, Rey has her legs wrapped around Ben and her underwear hanging off her left foot.

“Ignore it,” Ben mumbles, his lips warm on her neck and his hands curled around the counter on either side of her for support.

Rey’s inclined to go along with his suggestion, and they let the bell ring twice more while she tugs his jeans down with her feet and he sneaks a hand under her nightshirt.

“Rey, open up! It’s an emergency!” Rose’s muffled voice calls out, accompanied by a barrage of frantic knocks on the door.

She’s out of Ben’s arms and off the counter in the blink of an eye, barely sparing a thought for their state of undress before she flings the door open to be greeted by the sight of Rose’s raised fist, ready to let loose another round of knocking.

“What’s the emergency? Is everyone okay? What happened?” Rey demands, her mind too preoccupied by dozens of worst case scenarios to notice the way Rose’s wide-eyed look has trailed from her to a half-naked Ben pulling his jeans up.

“Um… Finn and Poe are arguing about what color to paint the nursery and _I’m sorry what the hell is going on here_?” Rose’s voice rises in pitch as she shoulders her way past Rey and into the apartment. “You two got together? _When_? How? Oh my god, I can’t believe this finally-”

Rey absentmindedly closes the door behind her, her mind reeling from relief – until she realizes what Rose is going on about. “Wait, no, it’s not-”

Ben picks his discarded shirt off the ground and gives Rose a wide berth as he comes to stand next to Rey, twisting his hand behind his back to discreetly hand over her underwear. “It’s not what you think, Rose,” he tells their puzzled guest as Rey decides to stuff the small scrap of cotton into the back pocket of his jeans due to her own lack of pockets.

“We’re not together,” Rey clarifies, bracing herself for judgement. “This is just…”

“Convenient,” Ben supplies when she fails to come up with a good explanation.

“Right, yeah. It’s a matter of convenience,” she plays along, internally wincing at the way Rose has crossed her arms and is eyeing the two of them with clear disapproval. “What’s some casual sex between best friends, right?” Rey elbows Ben a little too forcefully when he fails to agree.

“Exactly!” he says, nervously shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

Rose shakes her head at the both of them. “I’m going to go get a table at Maz’s,” she declares with a pointed look at Rey. “You’re going to meet me there in half an hour and we’re going to talk about this.”

With that, Rose lets herself out of the apartment and leaves them in a stunned silence that lasts for all of ten seconds.

“How angry will she be if you’re late?” Ben murmurs, lips brushing against the shell of her ear as his arms wrap around her from behind.

Rey leans into him for a moment while she considers the situation at hand. “Oh, well. She’s already mad anyway,” she decides, spinning around to flash Ben a mischievous grin. She holds out her hand, and Ben is all too willing to let her drag him into the shower.

 

* * *

 

“How long has this been going on?” Rose asks before Rey even has a chance to be seated.

“Can I at least order first?” she tries to stall, reaching for the menu on the table.

Rose swats her hand away. “I’ve already ordered. You always get the same thing anyway,” she points out before Rey has a chance to protest. “Now spill. I want to know _everything_.”

Rey sighs as she leans back in her chair and runs a hand through her damp hair. She and Ben had wasted twenty of her thirty minutes in the shower, which had left her with no time at all to dry her hair. “I don’t know what to say. There’s really not that much to tell.”

“Not that much to-” an incredulous Rose echoes. “Rey, you’re sleeping with _Ben_!” she hisses quietly; at least she has the decency to lower her voice. “Ben, your best friend. Ben, the guy you’ve been living with for three years. Ben, _Rose-we’re-just-friends-it’s-not-a-thing_ Ben. _That_ Ben.”

“We _are_ just friends,” Rey crosses her arms defensively. “It’s just… we’re both too busy to date, and even hooking up means time wasted on finding someone and traveling back and forth. Things are just easier this way.”

“But don’t you, you know…” Rose hesitates. “I mean, doesn’t it make things weird?”

“Not really? Maybe in the beginning, but we’ve gotten used to it-”

Rose cuts in. “Again: how long has this been going on?” she asks as a waiter brings them two glasses of ice water.

Rey immediately proceeds to drain half her glass. “Um… two years?” she tells Rose with a slight wince.

“TWO-” Rose nearly leaps out of her chair, and calms down only when she realizes her outburst has attracted some attention. “Two years?” she hisses at Rey. “You’ve been living _and_ sleeping together for two years, and you still think you’re ‘just friends’? Come _on_ , Rey.”

“It’s just sex, Rose. It doesn’t _mean_ anything,” Rey huffs. “Ben and I have been friends for half my life, basically. There’s really not much that could change our friendship.”

“Except this isn’t a friendship anymore!” Rose argues. “What do you call it when two people live together _and_ sleep with each other?” She doesn’t allow Rey a chance to speak. “Because where I come from, that’s a relationship, Rey. Hell, _everywhere_ in the world, that’s considered a relationship. A committed one.”

“That’s not-”

“Close your eyes.”

Rey’s forehead furrows in confusion. “What?”

“Close your eyes, and tell me what you see when you imagine being in a relationship with someone,” Rose instructs her.

She sighs and huffs but does as told anyway, closes her eyes and clears her mind and tries to picture what a relationship would look like. Images come to her, but they’re all just snippets from movies and books – romance and grand gestures and dramatic declarations, none of which appeal to her in the slightest. “I don’t know,” Rey opens her eyes and frowns at the expectant look on Rose’s face. “I don’t know what a relationship would look like, for me. I’ve just… I guess I’ve just never thought about it.”

Rose remains undeterred. “Okay, let’s do this instead. I’m going to give you a checklist, and you’re going to see how many of these things apply to you and Ben.”

“Do we _really_ have to-”

“ _Yes_ ,” Rose states, leaving no room for argument. “Okay, off the top of my head: is he the first person you think of each morning? The last person you think of at night? Can he make you happy just by being around? Can he make a bad day better just by being there? Do you miss him at random times of the day, just because? Do you ever find yourself thinking of him, just because? And, most importantly, is he the first person you think of whenever something happens, good or bad or anything in between?”

Rey stares at Rose for the longest time, watches a smirk bloom on her friend’s face as her mind races to match memories to each item on the checklist. “Oh my god,” she whispers, “this is a relationship.”

“ _Finally_ ,” Rose rolls her eyes.

“But…” Rey trails off, tries to organize her world in a way that’ll make sense again. “But that’s not how relationships work. I mean, things were like this even before we started sleeping together. And it’s not like I _love_ him, not in _that_ way.” Her protests sound weak even to her own ears, and the way she chokes on the word _love_ is particularly damning.

Rose’s eyes grow soft, and she reaches across the table to take Rey’s hand.

“Honey,” she says very gently, “are you sure about that?”

 

* * *

 

She comes home from brunch to find Ben hanging out on the couch, watching old reruns of _Star Trek_. It’s familiar and predictable and there it is, that warm and fuzzy wave of fondness for him that she never realized isn’t purely platonic. 

“Hey,” Ben turns down the volume and pats the space next to him, watches her with careful eyes as she walks over. “How’d it go with Rose?”

Rey sits on the opposite end of the couch, toes her shoes off and pulls her knees up to her chest. “Okay,” she shrugs, “up until the part where she made me realize we’re practically dating.”

Ben turns to face her. “Rey-”

“You’re the first person I see in the morning and the last person I see at night, we spend more time together than apart, we haven’t dated anyone else in years, we’re _living together_ , Ben, and I know friends do that, I know we were friends when we decided to do that, but friends don’t do what we do, this isn’t even a friendship anymore-” She’s breathing hard, speaking so fast she’s tripping on her own words, and her heart is racing and her stomach is twisting and–

“Rey,” Ben says quietly, calmly, and he reaches out to take her hands in his own, stills her nervous fingers by intertwining them with his. “Rey, I know.”

She blinks at him – once, twice, again when she can’t think of anything to say, when his words echo in her head. “Why didn’t you _say_ anything?” Rey eventually demands.

Ben leans forward, shuffles closer on the couch. “I like what we have. As long as we’re together and you’re happy, it’s never really mattered to me what we call it. Friendship, relationship – what difference does it make?”

 _As long as we’re together_ , Ben says, and all of the panic and fear and distress disappears. In their place Rey finds an answer, an assurance, a vision of the future.

She moves closer, meets him in the middle of the couch and allows her knees to knock against his own. “There _is_ a difference, Ben,” Rey whispers, her throat dry with nerves.

“Like what?” he asks, lips pulling up into a small smile as one hand reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear.

Rey leans into his touch, smiles when Ben’s palm curves around her cheek and the pad of his thumb caresses the underside of her jaw. “Like… if we were together I could kiss you all the time, even around our friends.”

Ben cocks his head to the side, pretends to consider the matter. “That _would_ make Karaoke Night more bearable,” he decides with a grin.

Encouraged, Rey nods and goes on. “And we could tell Leia, so that she’d stop pressuring you to settle down.”

“That would be nice,” Ben agrees, and his hands slide down to her waist to pull her into his lap. “What else?”

Rey draws courage from the way his hands settle familiarly on her hips, from the small smile she knows he only ever wears around her, from how right and perfect and at home she feels around him.

“And… I could tell you I love you.”

She keeps her eyes fixed on his no matter how badly she wants to look away, no matter how nervous she gets when Ben simply stares at her for what feels like eternity, his lips slightly parted in surprise.

And then he gives her the most beautiful smile she’s ever seen, leans down and presses their foreheads together. “I love you too, sweetheart,” Ben whispers against her lips right before he kisses her, and she can feel his smile moving against her own.

It feels like every kiss they’ve ever shared together, like nothing’s changed just because they’ve said some words to each other. But maybe that’s because they’ve been this way since the very beginning, maybe it’s because she’s always known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that Ben kisses her like she’s precious and cherished and _loved_.

 _So this is what a relationship looks like,_ Rey thinks to herself.

It's beautiful.

 

* * *

 

_Darling heart, I loved you from the start  
but you'll never know what a fool I've been._

**Author's Note:**

> I was tempted to include this as part of my _reblog_ collection because that's where all of my mediocre content goes, but that's mainly a ficlet collection and this is the length of two ficlets so... *cue the usual apologetic author speech*
> 
> I hope you guys enjoyed this anyway. It's a bit of a mess, but if I can make even one person feel warm and fuzzy with this mess, I'll be happy. (Also I couldn't resist writing clueless!Rey and - for once - emotionally stable and well-adjusted!Ben.) As always, thanks for reading and feel free to reach out/comment/etc.
> 
> See you guys in a few days for Reylo Week!


End file.
